Podcast

Guest Room Ideas: Upcycling

Thank you to Luxi for sending me this mattress complimentary. All opinions & experiences are my own. Some links in this post may be affiliate links.

Today is the next room in our home reveal: our guest room inspired by upcycling!! I hope you get some ideas for your own guest room. Before we head into peak at the guest room, I want to talk about the inspiration behind our upcycled guest room.

You guys know how much I love mattress shopping online! It’s SO nice to skip the store and pushy sales person, and get something delivered straight to your door! Plus, if you lay on a mattress in the store, still won’t know how well you’ll sleep on it.

For example, who has gotten into a hotel after a long day of traveling, laid on the bed and thought “ahhh this is a dream bed!” only to find yourself with aches and pains in the morning because it was too stiff or too soft ??? It’s really hard to tell how good a mattress is by laying on it for a few minutes. Especially if you’re tired from traveling or shopping. Which is why I put together an in-depth guide on buying a mattress online.

Environmental Pledge

Most online mattress companies have amazing return policies. Like at least 100 night free trial with a full return no questions asked, don’t just go ordering every mattress under the sun to test it! Financially it won’t cost you anything upfront. However, the social and environmental costs are massive. Ultimately, we’ll pay for generations to come! Can you even begin to imagine the harmful effects to the environment if someone bought five mattresses (or even two) and just threw away 110+ pounds of urethane, rayon, and nylon!?

Which is why I partnered with Luxi to bring awareness to this growing issue, and for this room. Listen, I get it, we live in a “burn and churn” society more than ever. We are accustomed to free shipping and returns for most items that can be ordered from our phones. However, Luxi’s Environmental Pledge is an important reminder the impact returning a mattress has and our “consumer mindset.”

Shannon Farley, Co-founder of Luxi explains, “owners are empowered to take responsibility for their purchases—from proper cleaning to repairing, reusing and sharing. Consumers take, make, dispose and repeat—a pattern that is driving us towards ecological bankruptcy.” Increased popularity of online mattress sales over the last few years has resulted in thousands of mattresses ending up in donation channels. Seriously, check your local GoodWill or Habitat for Humanity before buying a mattress, because SO many of these retailers are having to dump essentially new mattresses there which ultimately end up clogging landfills.

As part of their environment pledge, Luxi has actually made a customizable mattress! You can unzip that pretty white cover and flip the insides to your preference of soft, medium, or firm! The queen and king allow you to swap the setting on only half the bed. Allowing you and your partner have different preferences you both can get your ideal sleep. How cool is that?

So while some mattress companies are doing their part, like Luxi with their non-toxic materials (no formaldehyde! Yeah, mattress companies literally put formaldehyde in them!) and Nest Bedding with their organic, natural, and certified materials, it’s now up to the consumers to not take advantage of the return policy system and harm our environment.

Upcycling

For this room, I decided to take Luxi’s environmental pledge to heart and upcycled the bulk of it! That’s right, one man’s trash is another’s treasure for our guest room. The bed frame and end tables came from E’s friend whose girlfriend just moved in with him so they were consolidating furniture. The comforter is from my mom’s house (formerly a furnished rental she just sold). One of the purchases for this room were these Target pillows I couldn’t resist to bring in the plants and blue from the picture.

The desk is from over five years ago. E used it as his workspace in our tiny one bedroom apartment. It’s actually where he ran his company from! The chair I bought as a pack of four when we first moved in since we didn’t have anywhere to sit. I actually bought them thinking we’d use them for a kitchen table, but instead used them in my office, guest room, and bedroom. The sheets you can’t see, but I need to shout out since they are so soft and so affordable from Nestl Bedding. We got them for this room first, at $16 and loved them so much we got them for our bedroom too!

The picture above the desk was a gift and the work of the phenomenal Peter Lik. You might recognize it from a post I did a while back on how to make your apartment feel like a home.

The 52 Lists Project book is from a PR sample from Caring Crate, an awesome self-care subscription box for those living with mental health or chronic illnesses or just for those who need the extra TLC. Highly recommend you check it out!

The pink Himalayan salt lamp I’ve had for years, because #ions and it’s pretty. I have them in every room of our house and just love the look of them. On the note of earthy materials, I added conchs and urchins to the window sill and desk. I’ve collected conchs from walks on the beach for years. The urchins are special to me, they’re from my parents trip to New Zealand over 10 years ago!

The Apple MacBook is one of our spares for guests or if I have multiple interns at once. And the plants are all Homegoods finds we’ve acquired over time.

One of the other purchases were curtains. They’re actually a fun hack I learned from Tilley’s Threads. Basically I bought a painters drop cloth from Walmart, and these curtain rings. I just cut the drop cloth in half and folded it over to give the top flare look. Total cost? $12! Truth though: My local store only had white with a plastic lining, which is why mine came out more stiff than Tilley’s, if you’re in my boat too, I would also recommend finding a cheap tablecloth on Amazon like this ($11). I actually bought the one linked. Currently I’m in the process of swapping the curtains out to give them a more natural look. Just double-check your dimensions on that, we have really high ceilings so I needed extra long.

That’s it! Nothing fancy, super minimalist. The total cost of new things for this room:$108 (“curtains”, decorative pillows (we got them on sale), and sheets).

I really wanted to show how you can still bring a room together even with hand me downs and upcycling! Guests have room for stuff in four drawers and a huge closet with shelves so we skipped the dresser. TBH, the dresser is actually in our garage. We were too lazy to move it up the stairs, haha! It’s a great little peaceful oasis and that window is Tucker’s favorite spot in the house! We actually call this, “Tucker’s Room” ?.

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I'm Rachel, the founder of The Confused Millennial, a lifestyle blog sharing personal experience and advice to help other confused millennials navigate this whole "#adulting" thing on topics like careers, entrepreneurship, finance, the home, relationships and more.
After earning my Master's Degree in Counseling, and landing my "dream job" I found myself feeling completely miserable with no work-life balance. I rectified the situation by getting in touch with my passions and started coaching millennials to create their own blog or business that they could turn into a fulfilling and sustainable career. My expertise has been seen on Forbes as a contributing writer, Fast Company, Brit + Co, Dailyworth, and more. Learn more about working together on turning your blog into a business here.

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About Me

Hi there! I'm Rachel, the founder of #TCMillennial. I am a multi-passionate millennial who loves helping others embrace who they truly are while figuring out this whole "adult" thing. On the blog, you'll find all things #adulting like: real talk, tips for professional development, and so much more! If you want to write a guest post or request a topic, get in touch!